Asia: Historical Review

 

Asia is the world’s largest and most diverse continent. It occupies the eastern four-fifths of the giant Eurasian landmass. Asia is more a geographic term than a homogeneous continent, and the use of the term to describe such a vast area always carries the potential of obscuring the enormous diversity among the regions it encompasses. Asia has both the highest and the lowest points on the surface of Earth, has the longest coastline of any continent, is subject overall to the world’s widest climatic extremes, and, consequently, produces the most varied forms of vegetation and animal life on Earth. In addition, the peoples of Asia have established the broadest variety of human adaptation found on any of the continents.

The name Asia is ancient, and its origin has been variously explained. The Greeks used it to designate the lands situated to the east of their homeland. It is believed that the name may be derived from the Assyrian word asu, meaning “east.” Another possible explanation is that it was originally a local name given to the plains of Ephesus, which ancient Greeks and Romans extended to refer first to Anatolia (contemporary Asia Minor, which is the western extreme of mainland Asia), and then to the known world east of the Mediterranean Sea. When Western explorers reached South and East Asia in early modern times, they extended that label to the whole of the immense landmass.

Asia is bounded by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Indian Ocean to the south, the Red Sea (as well as the inland seas of the Atlantic Ocean—the Mediterranean and the Black) to the southwest, and Europe to the west. Asia is separated from North America to the northeast by the Bering Strait and from Australia to the southeast by the seas and straits connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans. The Isthmus of Suez unites Asia with Africa, and it is generally agreed that the Suez Canal forms the border between them. Two narrow straits, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, separate Anatolia from the Balkan Peninsula.

The land boundary between Asia and Europe is a historical and cultural construct that has been defined variously; only as a matter of agreement is it tied to a specific borderline. The most convenient geographic boundary—one that has been adopted by most geographers—is a line that runs south from the Arctic Ocean along the Ural Mountains and then turns southwest along the Emba River to the northern shore of the Caspian Sea; west of the Caspian, the boundary follows the Kuma-Manych Depression to the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait of the Black Sea. Thus, the isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas, which culminates in the Caucasus mountain range to the south, is part of Asia.

Asia’s population is unevenly distributed, mainly because of climatic factors. There is a concentration of population in western Asia as well as great concentrations in the Indian subcontinent and the eastern half of China. There are also appreciable concentrations in the Pacific borderlands and on the islands, but vast areas of Central and North Asia—whose forbidding climates limit agricultural productivity—have remained sparsely populated. Nonetheless, Asia, the most populous of the continents, contains some three-fifths of the world’s people.

Religion

Asia is the birthplace of all the world’s major religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism—and of many minor ones. Of those, only Christianity developed primarily outside of Asia; it exerts little influence on the continent, though many Asian countries have Christian minorities. Buddhism has had a greater impact outside its birthplace in India and is prevalent in various forms in China, South Korea, Japan, the Southeast Asian countries, and Sri Lanka. Islam has spread out of Arabia eastward to South and Southeast Asia. Hinduism has been mostly confined to the Indian subcontinent.

Asia is not only Earth’s largest continent but also its youngest and structurally most-complicated one. Although Asia’s evolution began almost four billion years ago, more than half of the continent remains seismically active, and new continental material is currently being produced in the island arc systems that surround it to the east and southeast. In such places, new land is continuously emerging and is added to the bulk of the continent by episodic collisions of the island arcs with the mainland. Asia also contains the greatest mountain mass on Earth’s surface: the Plateau of Tibet and the bordering mountains of the Himalayas, Karakoram Range, Hindu Kush, Pamir, Kunlun Mountains, and Tien Shan. By virtue of its enormous size and relative youth, Asia contains many of the morphological extremes of Earth’s land surface—such as its highest and lowest points, longest coastline, and largest area of continental shelf. Asia’s immense mountain ranges, varied coastline, and vast continental plains and basins have had a profound effect on the course of human history. The fact that Asia produces vast quantities of fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—in addition to being a significant contributor to the global production of many minerals (e.g., about three-fifths of the world’s tin) heavily underlines the importance of its geology for the welfare of the world’s population.